Calling All Skeletons
by CompleteDenial
Summary: An insight into the misadventures of Diane Cooperberg. I'm attaching a Trigger Warning to Chapter 1, Only Women Bleed which contains mentions of self harm. Please don't read if you are sensitive to this subject. Overall Rating M due to chapter 1, but individual chapter ratings vary.
1. Only Women Bleed

****TRIGGER WARNING****

**Mentions of self-harm.**

**Only Women Bleed**

_**Eli**__: I'm not the one who tried to kill myself. _

_**Diane**__: I had good reason, if you hadn't figured that out yet._

She sits at the kitchen table, alone, in the pre-dawn hours. The coffee she poured has long since gone cold, yet she keeps her hands wrapped around the white ceramic mug; a buoy in the self-inflicted turbulence that is her life.

Self-inflicted._ How appropriate_, her mind taunted. The white gauze bandages on her wrists were testament enough that this was all self-inflicted, and she seemed to collapse in on herself knowing she was the cause of, well, almost everything.

It wasn't so much the pain she knew she'd caused, or the anger or bitterness. It was the disappointment she seen in Eli's eyes when he looked at her. Diane knew he wasn't disappointed in her for what she'd done, but because she thought she could take the easy way out. There was never an easy way out.

So she sits at the kitchen table, alone, in the pre-dawn hours because her husband can't look at her like he used to; her marriage is taking its last dying breath. A marriage that had essentially died several weeks or even months before, it just hadn't hit the obits yet.

Eli wanders into the kitchen and sees her sitting there, her pale face caused by weeks of emotional guilt she'd put upon herself, but that he had also lain heavily on her shoulders. He feels sorry for her, though he's not sure why.

She jumps in her seat when he takes the coffee cup from her hands, his fingers brushing the white gauze the sleeves of her robe couldn't quite cover. For a moment, it's as if everything's normal again.

Diane glances at the bandages, and then at Eli as he stands at the counter with his back to her.

_Things will get better_, she thinks.


	2. Got My Mind Set On You

**I've Got My Mind Set on You**

_**Diane:**__ Do you think we're the only ones separated who still have sex? _

_**Eli:**__ Once a week for ten years,_ _that's more sex than we had when we were married._

Diane made the rules and once a week for ten years, she chose the location, the day and the time. Occasionally, she'd left it up to Eli to arrange the details, but Diane had never liked being told what to do, not by anyone. When he began telling her how to dress for their trysts, she drew the line.

She stands in front of her closet in nothing but her underwear , looking at colors and feeling textures, deciding what would make her look good. She settles on a red button up cardigan that she thinks will compliment her simple black skirt rather nicely. She never dresses up, but she does dress practically.

In the course of the past ten years, there had been many dates with many men, but none of them seemed to satisfy her like Eli. The divorce, however mutual, was the end of a sure thing, something that had worked extremely well for Diane's wants and needs. _With the exception of Parisian dreams_, she tells herself.

Originally, Diane was planning on cancelling this week's little get together, considering her ex father-in-law was lying in a hospital bed taking his last breaths, but felt she'd sacrificed enough of herself for this family, _dreams, hair, career and sanity_, her brain supplied, to not cancel.

With selection made, she lies on the bed and lights a cigarette, something which she has been trying to quit, picks up the phone and dials Eli's pager. He never knew when she'd page him which made this set-up all the more thrilling, elicit. She was, in actual fact, conducting a rather sordid affair with her ex-husband. Who does that?

When the phone rings a few minutes later, Diane smiles and lets it ring a few seconds to keep him on edge. When she answers, she listens to him tell her why they can't meet, until she explains exactly how she's feeling and senses her ex is wilting – which she sincerely hopes won't be the case.

She dresses quickly, arranges her hair and with a final glance in the mirror, rushes out the door. Diane knows, despite how eager Eli is, escaping his mother and traffic on the way would be murder, so she has time to get to her chosen location and wait.

She's never been a patient woman.


	3. Paris When It Rained

**Paris when It Rained**

_**Diane:** We were going to live in Paris. **Eli:** But times were tough. **Diane:** Sacrificed my career for him and sold cosmetics for Chanel._

There was something magical, Diane had once thought, about rain in France. Certainly, it was the same rain anywhere else in the world, but rain in France was different; it was lighter, cooler. On bad days it would soak its way through the layers of your clothes, chilling your skin and turning the marrow in your bones to ice, but still, Diane loved it.

At times when it rains, she's transported back to those days in France, to the baguettes and brie, the art easel that stood in the corner of their small sitting room with a blank canvas ready should the urge to paint strike her, which in those days had been frequently. That same easel takes up residence in the corner of her dining room at present.

She often catches herself tracking the raindrops as they run down the window pane, watching as they gather together on the glass, casting a myriad of colours across the wall and floor. It's like watching her dreams and life goals being washed away and ending up in a puddle of mud, never to be salvaged.

On days like those, she remembers Paris when it rained. How they'd gone there on a whim one weekend and done the tourist thing. Eating pain au chocolat outside the small bistro and watching the people pass by. Standing under the Eiffel Tower and being so caught up in simply being, that she hadn't noticed that it had started raining until her mascara was running down her cheeks.

As everyone around them moved for cover, Diane had let the rain wash over her, and managed to coerce Eli into a slow dance underneath the iron framework. He'd promised her the world that day as they danced, when they were still young and idealistic and such things seemed possible. They hadn't a care back then.

But the April shower had, over the months, slowly turned into an explosive storm which seemed to follow them. Her painting was neglected, his poetry no more. Their dreams and idealistic wants were perishing in an invisible fire and it seemed they continued to fan the flames.

As Diane stares out the window at the dark grey clouds rolling in, the promise of an all too familiar storm of explosive proportion, the urge to paint creeps upon her for the first time in years, for the first time since she had started working the Chanel counter and she sees no sense in ignoring it.

By the time the storm had passed, Diane had lain down the paint brush and stared at her painting, her heart beating erratically at the sight of what she had painted. In her head, she tells herself it doesn't mean anything, but still decides to name it _Last Waltz in Paris_.

She smiles slightly as she signs her name with a flourish in the bottom right hand corner.

.


	4. Mother Superior

**Mother** **Superior**

_**Diane:**__ What the hell do you think you're doing, I said._

_**Linda:**__ You can thank me later, she answered._

They say looks can be deceptive and Diane knew full well this phrase was coined by some poor soul who had had the grave misfortune of meeting, and possibly getting on the wrong side of, Shirley Cooperberg. The matriarch of the Cooperberg family was nothing if not a goddamn force of nature.

Upon first meeting her now ex-mother-in-law some twenty odd years ago, she'd had the good sense to keep her guard up. Judging by some of the stories Eli had spun, Diane felt she would be fed to the wolves the moment she crossed the threshold. Looking back on it, that first meeting had certainly left an impression on not only Diane herself, but Shirley too.

Shirley Cooperberg had a unique snake like charm to her. Diane wouldn't describe her as a bitch, at least not to anyone who could repeat that, but more of a deceiver of fools. It was as if she waited for a precise moment to strike, to sink her fangs into you for a brief amount of time just to let you feel how bad her bite could be.

Over the course of her ill-fated marriage to Eli, Diane slowly had seen the true colors of Shirley Cooperberg come to light; a snide comment or withering look here or there. On the whole, it hadn't affected Diane greatly, but then there was a change in the weather and suddenly everything Shirley said or did rubbed her the wrong way.

At every opportunity, whether it be large family gatherings at Christmas or once in a blue moon Sunday lunches, Shirley would take it upon herself to belittle not only Diane herself, but just about everyone she could possibly sink her venomous poison into. No one was safe. It seemed nothing anyone done would satisfy Mother Superior, who was full of grace and charm when it suited her.

Diane knew there was another side to Shirley; she'd seen it once in a fleeting moment. When Simon had first been born, Shirley had sashayed into the room the way she does, as if she's expecting an audience, with flowers and a present and had been quite lovely. Of course, this was simply due to the fact Diane had given the woman her first grandchild, so it hadn't last long.

On the whole, she doesn't begrudge Shirley anything she ever said or done. Diane knows at the heart of it all, Shirley can be the sweetest and most charming woman on the planet, as well as being an overbearing devious manipulative bitch – _who sent you a wig for Christmas that one year_.

She doesn't like her, but Shirley certainly earned her respect.


End file.
